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The study investigated the cognitive opinions expressed by consumers in an online shopping environment in the sport supplementation industry as well as the influence certain factors identified through literature, had on the decision-making of these consumers. This was done in an attempt to better understand the online consumer in order to improve marketing campaigns within an e-Commerce environment. Primary data was collected by means of a snowball sampling strategy. Respondents were asked to complete an online questionnaire that consisted of 68 questions. 118 respondents initialized the online questionnaire and 102 fully completed it. Initial analysis proved the data to be sufficient for factor analysis where after confirmatory factor analysis was performed. A new framework to measure influential factors in an online environment was established. 6 out of 10 factors were found to contain sub-groups of influence which suggests that certain questions pertaining to those factors need improvement or rephrasing in order to measure the stand-alone factor more accurately. The reliability of all the factors was measured adequately, noting that Service Quality, Product Risk and Vendor Familiarity could be improved by further developing their underlying variables. Overall it was concluded that Price and Convenience were seen as the greatest motivational factors when a consumer decided to shop online, and Vendor Familiarity and Website Usability were regarded as two crucial components in the comfort level portrayed by consumers while shopping online. Trust and Security were also pointed out to be a major concern for online shoppers in a South African context. The findings of this study are of great value to entrepreneurs and businesses alike seeking to expand or increase their product offering into an online environment. Given the research results from this study and future studies on this topic, marketing strategies can be constructed more precisely in order to reach a target audience in an optimum and more productive manner. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The study investigated the cognitive opinions expressed by consumers in an online shopping environment in the sport supplementation industry as well as the influence certain factors identified through literature, had on the decision-making of these consumers. This was done in an attempt to better understand the online consumer in order to improve marketing campaigns within an e-Commerce environment. Primary data was collected by means of a snowball sampling strategy. Respondents were asked to complete an online questionnaire that consisted of 68 questions. 118 respondents initialized the online questionnaire and 102 fully completed it. Initial analysis proved the data to be sufficient for factor analysis where after confirmatory factor analysis was performed. A new framework to measure influential factors in an online environment was established. 6 out of 10 factors were found to contain sub-groups of influence which suggests that certain questions pertaining to those factors need improvement or rephrasing in order to measure the stand-alone factor more accurately. The reliability of all the factors was measured adequately, noting that Service Quality, Product Risk and Vendor Familiarity could be improved by further developing their underlying variables. Overall it was concluded that Price and Convenience were seen as the greatest motivational factors when a consumer decided to shop online, and Vendor Familiarity and Website Usability were regarded as two crucial components in the comfort level portrayed by consumers while shopping online. Trust and Security were also pointed out to be a major concern for online shoppers in a South African context. The findings of this study are of great value to entrepreneurs and businesses alike seeking to expand or increase their product offering into an online environment. Given the research results from this study and future studies on this topic, marketing strategies can be constructed more precisely in order to reach a target audience in an optimum and more productive manner. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel A. Andresen / The Online Shopping is a web based application intended for online retailers. The main objective of this application is to make it interactive and its ease of use. It would make searching, viewing and selection of a product easier. It contains a sophisticated search engine for user's to search for products specific to their needs. The search engine provides an easy and convenient way to search for products where a user can Search for a product interactively and the search engine would refine the products available based on the user’s input. The user can then view the complete specification of each product. They can also view the product reviews and also write their own reviews. The application also provides a drag and drop feature so that a user can add a product to the shopping cart by dragging the item in to the shopping cart. The main emphasis lies in providing a user-friendly search engine for effectively showing the desired results and its drag and drop behavior.

E-commerce has experienced exponential growth within the last few years. The rapid growth of e-commerce has created a need to improve consumer acceptance and the consumer's intention to engage in e-commerce. Female consumers have yet to embrace e-commerce as readily as male consumers. Differences between male and female consumer shopping behavior were examined. This study developed and empirically tested a model to predict the consumer's intention to engage in apparel e-commerce shopping based on the constructs of gender, shopping orientation, online experience, and Website's interactive features. Male and female U.S. consumers age 18 and older were surveyed to determine their intention to engage in apparel e-commerce shopping. A total of 240 responses were received. After the pre-analysis data screening, a total of 216 responses were available for further analyses. Factor analysis was conducted by using principal component analysis (PCA) with VARIMAX rotation. The PCA resulted in four new factors including consumer shopping preference (CSP), personalization Website features (PWF), shopping environment (SE), and social interaction (SI). The statistical method Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR) was used to predict whether gender (G1), CSP, PWF, SE, and SI have a significant influence on the consumer's intention to engage in apparel e-commerce shopping. Results of the OLR indicated that CSP was the only significant predictor of INT. A second OLR model was developed to determine the interaction effect of G1, CSP, PWF, SE, and SI used to predict the probability of INT. Results indicated the interactions of G1 and CSP, CSP and PWF, G1 and PWF, as well as SE and SI were significant predictors of INT. Two important contributions of this study include 1) an investigation of the key constructs that contribute to the consumer's intention to engage in apparel e-commerce shopping, and 2) an investigation of the interaction effect between the key constructs used to predict the consumer's intention to engage in apparel e-commerce shopping. The investigation results provide online retailers with the knowledge of how to increase e-commerce acceptance through understanding differences in male and female consumer shopping behaviors.

Since the explosion of the internet as a business medium, one of its primary uses has been marketing. The advantages of using the internet for business-to-consumer transactions are clear. The openness of the internet is creating opportunities for virtually all companies across various industries. The words 'internet', 'World Wide Web', 'www' or the 'web' refer to the same thing and are used interchangeably within this research study. The tourism industry is also experiencing a rapid adoption of the internet technology for marketing travel products and services. As a destination New Zealand is a small country comprising two main land masses and smaller outlying islands, with a population of about 4 million people (Statistics New Zealand 2004). Tourism is promoted as an essential part of the national economy, particularly to earn foreign exchange and generate employment. The number of international tourists visiting New Zealand is 2.2 million (Tourism New Zealand, 2006). In New Zealand almost all regional tourism organizations (RTOs) have a web presence, thereby exposing potential tourists to an array of destinations to visit. However, there are few New Zealand based studies that profile tourists based on their internet adoption and the differences between internet users and non-users. The question that baffles every business manager is what predisposes consumers to use a website? This is the fundamental question that motivated the study. While usability does play a major role in the adoption and use of a particular website, it is outside the scope of this project, otherwise the scope would have been too large and complicated to permit a useable questionnaire given the other concerns about respondents' past experiences and attitudes toward use of the net for the specific purposes of holiday purchases. The study draws upon innovation diffusion theory (IDT) and more recent conceptualizations of IT adoption behaviour to examine differences among Rogers' (1995) adoption categories. Within this context, 'adoption' refers to the stage in which a technology is selected for use by an individual. 'Diffusion' refers to the stage in which the technology spreads to general use and application. For this study an attempt is made to create a behavioural profile of visitors based on a sample of 517 overseas visitors to New Zealand. Visitors were asked to complete a questionnaire and provide information on their demographics, travel related behaviour, internet usage patterns, perceptions of the internet and online shopping in general. The thesis thus describes the initiation and evolution of an empirical research project, which investigates the adoption and diffusion of internet technologies amongst international visitors to New Zealand. The study was launched in an attempt to: 1) learn more about internet usage by visitors to New Zealand; 2) create a psychographic profile of visitors; 3) attempt to empirically validate the technology acceptance model (TAM); and 4) fill a noticeable void so that future researchers on IT and internet adoption by tourists in New Zealand have a foundation and starting point. Most of the previous research related to TAM has been in workplace related situations while studies in tourism have used students as subjects, rather than actual visitors to a particular destination (Shang et al., 2005, Moon and Kim, 2001, Klopping and McKinney, 2004). Specific market studies undertaken by destination marketing organisations or regional tourism organisations were considered only inasmuch as they aided generalization as place specificity hindered conceptual development pertaining to themes of adoption and general usage patterns. The study seeks to build on Rogers' (1995) seminal work on the diffusion of innovations and make a unique contribution to existing diffusion studies by its focus on the individual visitors as the unit of analysis and by its test of the TAM model. This study presents descriptive results via standard statistical analysis, a cluster analysis of users and a structural equation modelling of the TAM applied within a context of international visitors to New Zealand. The data were collected at major locations - the viaduct basin in Auckland and the international departure lounge at the Christchurch International Airport. The two locations were chosen to enable faster data collection. Initially the data was gathered at the viaduct basin in Auckland but the number of respondents was not many. Since the data collection was slow, decided to collect from Christchurch International airport where departing passengers could be approached. Individual passengers/tourists were approached and a screening question to ascertain if they were visitors or not was asked. If they were visiting, then they were asked to participate in the survey. No prior specific screening was undertaken to determine if they had used internet or not for their trip/travel to New Zealand. However, subsequent analysis shows that only 2.3% of the sample had not used the internet, and 31% of the sample had not bought tourism products or services over the internet. Therefore, overall, experience and internet usage was not uncommon for the majority of the sample, but a large proportion of non-users existed to permit comparative analysis. While there is a bias towards males in the sample, the 19-35 years age group was slightly more numerous for both genders, than were other age groups. The results indicate that mean internet usage is comparatively high, as is familiarity with many electronic consumer durables. The sample possesses a bias toward English speaking countries, younger people and educationally higher qualified people. Internet search engines seem to be the most popular source of search. The socio-demographic variables such as age, gender and educational attainment appeared to be but a moderate influence on general internet usage and thus on the use of the internet for booking holidays. Factor analysis of the attitudinal statements revealed six factors, which accounted for about 60 % of the total variance. The clear emergence of factors enabled the development of clusters. The clusters appear to have significance with reference to usage rates of internet. The home ownership of electronics shows a high percentage of respondents had mobile phones. This implies that New Zealand Tourism has to look at options or possible services it can introduce to market to these people who could be using mobile devices not only in their country but also while travelling in New Zealand. Wireless is another important development in the field of technology and many of the tourism DMO in other developed countries in Europe and US are adapting approaches based on these technologies to market to potential customers.

<p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p><p> </p><p><strong>Date: </strong>June 2, 2009</p><p><strong>Programme: </strong>MIMA – International Marketing<strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Course:</strong> EF0705 Master Thesis</p><p><strong>Authors:</strong> Sutanita Thavornchak, Waritthar Taratanaphol</p><p><strong>Tutor:</strong> Joakim Netz</p><p><strong>Title:</strong> Factors influencing online purchase intention: Domestic Airline E-ticket in Thailand</p><p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Internet has become one of the most powerful tools to enhance the performance in every industry and business, including travel and tourism industry as well.  The industry has been dramatically changed by the internet in form of information search, trip planner, particularly the introduction of a new online reservation system, an electronic ticket (E-ticket). Moreover, there currently is an attempt of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to change all 240 airlines around the world into this E-ticket system. About the e-ticket system in Thailand, many airlines have already adopted this system and tried to introduce it to their customers. However, the statistic was shown that only 24% of the internet user has experienced with it, which is pretty low comparing to some other countries. Consequently, the airlines have been trying to improve and enhance their systems in order to encourage the customers to purchase the electronic ticket.</p><p><strong>Problem:</strong> “What are the factors that influence intention to make an online purchase of airline e-ticket?”<strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The purpose of this research is to explore the factors influencing the intention to purchase the domestic airline e-ticket in Thailand, and also to investigate whether there are any differences between e-ticket adopters and non-adopters.</p><p><strong>Method</strong>:         The research is based on quantitative research by using online self-administered survey. The list of respondents was from two travel agencies in Thailand. The questionnaires were sent out to 350 respondents and a total of 253 usable respondents were collected in this research. The questionnaires were designed based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The model comprises of Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of use (PEOU). In addition, the theory of Perceived Risk (PR) is also added to be the third construct in the model.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The findings indicate that the all three constructs have different impacts on intention to purchase of e-ticket adopter and e-ticket non adopter. Perceived Usefulness (PU) is the only construct that influences e-ticket adopter while all three construct have significant impact on future intention to purchase of e-ticket non adopter. Convenience factor tends to be the most important one in Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) for e-ticket non adopter whereas product information and accessibility is more important to e-ticket adopter in Perceived Usefulness (PU). Security and privacy are the major concern in Perceived Risk (PR) when buying e-ticket. However, there are additional factors which affect the future intention to purchase exclude from the three constructs studied.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p> </p>